LANDSCAPE OF THE BODY
An urban nightmare in two acts, Landscape charts the lousy luck of Betty, a woman who leaves a miserable family in Maine and flees with her 16-year-old son Bert to New York. There they meet a lot of Big Apple worms, various vintage Guare eccentrics: Raulito, a Cuban transvestite travel agent and scam artist who exploits Betty, and Durwood Peach, a disturbed ex-Good Humor man who offers her crack-brained affection and the illusion of escape.
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It’s scary to imagine how this ensemble prepared to play Guare’s scuzzy creatures. They form a unique rogues’ gallery: Christopher Thometz’s bad cop/good suitor; Christopher Johnson’s selfish bicyclist, lethal bank teller, and naive dope king; Jennifer Gehr’s grungy henchwoman; Brian Sheridan’s Latin-lover impostor; and especially Will Schutz’s happily unhinged Durwood Peach. Only Dominic Conti, playing a wired punk, goes out of control even for Guare: his head shakes more than LA; it’s impossible to tell what he looks like until the curtain call.
